6 planes called in just before fire deaths

Commanders asked for six retardant-dropping airplanes less than an hour before 19 Arizona firefighters died last month in a sign of how dire the situation became before the crew was engulfed in flames.

The six planes were never deployed or arrived because of the limited number of tankers in the nation's aerial firefighting fleet and the dangerous weather conditions at the time. Fire officials say that even if they had been available winds were so strong they couldn't have been used to save the firefighters' lives.

But the fact that so many planes were requested provides more proof that firefighters were facing an increasingly dangerous scenario.

The fire northwest of Phoenix destroyed more than 100 homes.

977 counts filed in Cleveland case

The decade-long ordeal of three Cleveland women takes new shape in the 977-count indictment filed Friday against the man accused of imprisoning them.

Among the most serious charges: that he caused the death of one of his victims' fetuses by punching and starving her.

Ariel Castro, 53, is accused of kidnapping the three women and holding them captive — sometimes restrained in chains — along with the 6-year-old girl he fathered. The women disappeared separately from 2002 to 2004, when they were 14, 16 and 20 years old.

Each said they had accepted a ride from Castro, who remained friends with the family of one girl and even attended vigils over the years marking her disappearance.

Judges uphold pirate's conviction

A panel of federal judges on Friday upheld the criminal conviction of the highest-ranking pirate caught by the U.S. government.

The three judges of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled unanimously in the case of Mohammad Saaili Shibin, who has been sentenced to 12 life terms for his pivotal role in two hijackings, which included the slaying of four Americans on their yacht off Somalia.

Also,

An author who saw his self-help business crash after he led a sweat lodge ceremony that left three people dead was paroled from prison on Friday after serving nearly two years for negligent homicide convictions. James Arthur Ray, 55, was freed from the state prison in Buckeye, near Phoenix.